I am attempting to cast a C style const char[] string pointer (returned from a DLL) into a Python compatible string type. but when Python27 executes:
import
ctypes.cast() is used to convert one ctype instance to another ctype datatype. You don't need it To convert it to python string. Just use ".value" to get it in python string.
>>> s = "Hello, World"
>>> c_s = c_char_p(s)
>>> print c_s
c_char_p('Hello, World')
>>> print c_s.value
Hello, World
More info here